James R. Mirick sets the record straight on things he cares about

Progress Stomps On

The once-dominant telegram, has, after 150 years, fallen to the onslaught of e-mail, instant messaging, and cellular text messaging. Western Union has announced as of January 27th 2006, that it will no longer accept telegraphic messages.

In my grandfather’s day, and he was once a telegraph boy on the railroad, you went into a telegraph office and wrote down your message on a pad of paper, and the operator keyed it in Morse code onto the line. It was then relayed a couple of times end ended up, say, in San Francisco, where the last operator copied it down, typed it, and sent a messenger on a bicycle off to deliver it for you — in mere hours! Grandpa taught me quite a bit of the code when I was young and to the end of his days considered it a very useful thing for anyone to know how to do.

Later, of course, the brass-and-wood telegraph key was replaced by the teletypewriter (which Western Union invented), which printed messages on long strips of paper, which were glued onto a message blank and sent out. Eventually they dispensed with the strips and just printed on the paper.

Western Union had the opportunity to purchase the patents on the telephone right after it was invented, but declined to do so on the theory that “no one will accept a verbal communication for any serious business purpose, they will insist on seeing it in writing.”

But don’t snicker at them as backward, WU has a long history of great innovation and practical engineering. In 1861 they completed the first fully transcontinental telegraph line, in 1871 they started transferring money “by wire” (and the term is still called that in banking, even when its done via the Internet), in 1933 they invented the singing telegram, in 1935 they introduced inter-city faxing, in 1943 they were using microwaves to send messages between cities, in 1958 they invented the Telex, in 1974 they launched Westar, the first domestic communications satellite (and had 5 in orbit in 1982), and in 1993 they invented the first branded prepaid long-distance telephone card.

So, I guess they’re entitled to dump the telegram if they want to. Still, I’ll kind of miss it.

Advertisements

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

One Response

Very interesting. While in the grain business (at the Minneapolis Grain
>Exchange 1972 to 1984) I remember the stories from some of the old
>members talking about the large area that Western Union had on the
>trading floor and the runners that would wrap telegrams around their
>fingers and head out on the floor and through the building looking for
>the intended person.
>
>Another service WU provided to the exchange was the transmission of the
>market ticker signal from the trading floor to locations all over the
>country and to Canada. WU would provide an operator every day to sit
>at a machine and send the data as it occurred in the futures pit. An
>additional duty of this person was to read and retransmit the signal
>from the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange to US subscribers. In Canada this
>data was sent in “four level” code and it needed to be changed to “six
>level” code for distribution in the US. The operator would sit at
>their transmitter machine and read the Canadian data and retype it into
>the data stream. A small toggle switch needed to be switched every
>time the source of the market source was changed.
>
>When the electronic price board was installed at the exchange the
>generation of the ticker signal was computerized. Although the
>transmitter machines were kept as spares I only remember them being
>used once.
>
>In the overall business relationship with WU (Minneapolis) I hade the
>opportunity to visit their offices and see the Wire Room including the
>very accurate clock that supplied time beats for clocks. At one time
>WU clocks were see around town in banks, insurance, and offices of
>major companies. I think the Grain Exchange was the last customer of
>the time service. Even after WU quit the clock service we occasionally
>needed to call over to get the time from them. They were always happy
>to supply our needs.
>
>In the late 1970’s the WU building was sold but they kept their wire
>room and a storefront to handle wiring of money and telegrams.
>
>The last telegram I sent was to Sandy Elling. I was on my way to
>Alaska and was going to miss her wedding. I stopped at the WU office
>in Glacier Park to send my greeting and best wishes. I hope she kept it.